[UPDATED] 'Gears of War: Ultimate Edition' On PC Is A Disaster For AMD Radeon Gamers

Gears of War: Ultimate Edition on PC releases today exclusively to the Windows 10 Store. It should have been another prominent feather in
Microsoft's DirectX 12 cap. Instead, it's one of the most disastrous PC game launches in years, and many AMD Radeon owners are advised to steer completely clear during the game's launch window.

This screenshot (taken from a benchmark video captured using the Windows 10 Game Bar) shows visual corruption on one of several AMD Radeon graphics cards.

I don't know precisely how QA is carried out at game studios, though I suspect they're not doing as thorough a job as they could be. One has to assume that at some point a tester or developer sits down with a batch of the latest video cards and tests their upcoming PC game with them. That seems reasonable, right? Especially for a flagship franchise from Microsoft. Especially for a company pushing the advantages of DirectX 12.

If someone at The Coalition or anyone involved in the porting, remastering, and development process would have taken the time to play Gears of War: Ultimate Edition on an AMD Radeon Fury, for example, they would have seen this atrocity:

What you're watching is the Radeon Fury running the Gears of War: Ultimate Edition benchmark on my capable Intel test bench, at 1440p with High quality settings. These settings include FXAA and Ambient Occlusion. You're also seeing horrendous hitching and stuttering, and some visual corruption thrown in for good measure, making the game completely unplayable on an excellent $500 graphics card.

I've verified this performance with other tech writers.

It's not just AMD's Radeon Fury that's affected,either. The R9 Nano, which typically outperforms a Radeon 390x and Nvidia GTX 980, is similarly brought to its knees. Microsoft touted 4K textures with this PC remaster, so let's witness the Nano running the Gears of War: Ultimate Edition benchmark at 4K resolution with High quality settings:

Another $500 graphics card exhibiting what amounts to a slideshow, rendered useless by a game that originally released nine years ago under DirectX 9 on a console. This, folks, is not how Microsoft will win back PC gamers.

AMD's Radeon Fury X and Radeon 380 also choked when switching quality to High and running at 1440p or higher.

Surely the performance gets even worse as you make your way down the Radeon product stack, right? Oddly enough, no. I tested an Asus Strix R7 370 under the same demanding 4K benchmark, and it turned in only a 13% lower average framerate. Crucially, no stuttering or artifacting was present.

The Radeon 390x is just fine, achieving double the framerate at High Quality/4K as the more expensive Fury and Nano cards.

What on earth is happening? I can only speculate at this point, but Microsoft PR finally sent me a statement late last night confirming the issue, although not with any level of detail: "We are working closely with AMD to address a few issues that users of some AMD Radeon Hardware are experiencing while playing Gears of War: Ultimate Edition for Windows 10 and expect that they will be addressed quickly in an upcoming update."

That statement was preceded by the heading "driver issues." It's important to note here that I was using the latest AMD Radeon Crimson 16.2 driver, after double-checking with AMD that it supported Gears PC.

(On a related note, Nvidia's Game Ready Driver for Gears of War: Ultimate Edition is version 362.00, available here.)

Now, one of the strategic shifts around DirectX 12 is that it takes power away from the driver and puts it in the hands of the developers. This means a driver should be less important than it used to be when it comes to extracting maximum performance out of a GPU.

AMD seems to be building a strong narrative around its DirectX 12 leadership. For proof of that, look no further than the recent Ashes of the Singularity results which declared AMD the uncontested winner in DirectX 12 performance. That game utilizes Asynchronous Compute, a feature that's very much AMD's secret weapon. Gears of War: Ultimate Edition for PC also utilizes Asynchronous Compute, and multiple tech outlets have proven that AMD dominates over Nvidia in that category.

Initially I thought it was a problem somehow triggered by AMD's HBM memory used in their Fiji-based cards, but seeing both the 290x and 380 struggle disproves that theory. Activating the High Quality preset switches on Ambient Occlusion, and if that feature is broken it would cause the artifacts and visual corruption we're seeing. But again I'm not certain what the true cause is because that issue doesn't scale and isn't present across the board.

Something is fishy here, and I'm digging into it. For now I have to question how this game ever achieved gold status and made it out the door in this state. I have to question a developer who ships a game without sitting down and physically ensuring that their product works properly on popular hardware configurations. It took me half a day to test a dozen or so video cards, yet that's clearly more QA than Microsoft and The Coalition managed to kick out.

I mentioned AMD's strong leadership thus far in DirectX 12, and I believe they've been playing a very lengthy chess game when it comes to DX12, beginning with Mantle. I can't bring myself to believe that AMD would sacrifice that with a poorly optimized driver, or some other form of negligence when it comes to this game, if only because it is DX12.

At the same time, it's difficult to accept that Microsoft, in their aggressive effort to promote Windows 10 using DX12 as one of the operating system's key advantages for gamers, would even think about releasing a game so utterly broken and unplayable on such a large number of video cards. One has to also wonder how much DX12 DNA can truly exist in a game born out of DX9.

Blame can't be assigned at this point, but the truth will come out. What I know for certain is that this puts yet another black eye on PC gaming. As Watch Dogs did. As Batman: Arkham Knight did. As Quantum Break likely will. I'll save that rant for a future article.

Admittedly, Gears of War Ultimate Edition on PC looks fantastic, especially at 4K. When it's playable. It has the original campaign, 19 remastered multiplayer maps, a ton of useful UI and gameplay improvements, mouse and keyboard support, and improved visuals across the board. But I can't in good conscience recommend that any AMD Radeon gamers support this game with their wallet just yet.

As for Nvidia gamers, Microsoft sends word that G-Sync users may experience frame rate issues, and are asking them to disable G-Sync if they experience any problems. Again, something that should have been tested and rectified before the game released to the public.

Let's first see how any upcoming patches iron out the problems before buying. And let's see if, someday, AAA developers will stop releasing broken PC games.

Update 3/1/2016 8:38 am PDT: The Coalition Community Manager PezRadar has posted a forum update indicating that all AMD cards using GCN 1.1 and GCN 1.2 are suffering problems, stating that "AMD is an important partner bringing the promise of DirectX 12 to life for gamers everywhere. We are working closely with them [...]"

The developers also confirm my suspicion about Ambient Occlusion: "There are visual issues with AMD graphics cards and the Ambient Occlusion setting, it is strongly recommended to turn this setting OFF. We are readying a fix to be deployed in the coming days."

Since joining Forbes in 2012, I've also contributed to gaming and technology features on PCWorld and Computer Shopper. You can also find me on Jupiter Broadcasting where I host Choose Linux, a show about capturing the excitement of discovering Linux....